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OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is set to finally unveil measures to clean up Canada’s election laws — nearly three years after an election plagued with spending abuses and alleged voter-suppression schemes,

But the proposed “fair elections act” is already shaping up as a large test of the Conservatives’ sincerity about democratic reform — especially since it comes from a party that has constantly tangled with Elections Canada and whose operations are still under a cloud after the 2011 campaign.

“The party that lies behind this government has proved to be extremely creative in how it’s tried to get around election rules,” says Craig Scott, the New Democrats’ democratic-reform critic.

“I have no confidence that this party doesn’t have other tricks up its sleeve if we don’t have a much better Canada Elections Act.”

Pierre Poilievre, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, will be placing the law before the Commons on Tuesday morning. On Twitter and in the Commons, Poilievre has been repeatedly reciting slogans to announce the bill’s arrival.

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“The fair elections act would keep everyday citizens in charge of democracy by putting special interests on the sidelines and rule-breakers out of the game altogether,” Poilievre said — twice — in the Commons on Monday, a slightly modified version of the Tweets he sent out over the weekend.

“It will give law enforcement sharper teeth, a longer reach and a freer hand, and it will crack down on and close loopholes to big money in politics.”

Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand has been asking for tougher election laws for several years now, but his office said on Monday the government had not consulted with Elections Canada on the contents of the new bill.

Elections Canada is due to get a technical briefing on the bill on Tuesday afternoon — several hours after MPs and the media get the details in the morning.

Poilievre, however, says Mayrand’s concerns have been heard.

“I did meet with the CEO of Elections Canada some time ago and we had a terrific and a very long meeting, at which I listened carefully to all of his ideas,” he told the Commons on Monday.

The Conservatives have long been at odds with Elections Canada, dating back to Harper’s own skirmishes when he was head of the National Citizens’ Coalition in the 1990s.

But the feud deepened after the Conservatives won power in 2006 and got into a larger legal wrangle over the way money was being moved between local and national operations — what was called the “in-and-out” scandal and one in which Conservative officials eventually pleaded guilty.

Since then, there have been other flashpoints — the largest being the so-called “robocalls” scheme, in which the Conservative database was reportedly used to place fraudulent calls misdirecting voters away from the polls on May 2, 2011. That case remains at the centre of criminal probes as well as a court case due to take place later this year.

As well, campaign-expense disputes from 2011 have cost the Conservatives two MPs: former minister Peter Penashue, forced to resign from his Labrador seat, as well as Dean Del Mastro, now sitting as an independent MP for Peterborough while his election spending is being legally contested. Heritage Minister Shelly Glover also had to settle an ongoing election-spending battle before she was sworn into cabinet last summer.

Liberal MP Ralph Goodale, former finance minister, says he fears the new legislation will be just one more battle between the Conservatives and Elections Canada.

“It’s ominous,” said Goodale. “Given their track record with Elections Canada, which has been confrontational right from day one, and then resentful and now may have moved to vindictive, it’s significant that they have prepared this without any meaningful discussion with anyone at Elections Canada.”

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